U.S. President Barack Obama defends government programs monitoring Americans' phone and Internet activity, insisting they were conducted with broad safeguards to protect against abuse. Rough Cut (no reporter narration).

THE White House has defended intelligence agencies collecting people's telephone records, saying it is a critical tool to fight terrorism.

A civil liberties group branded the program, authorised by a top secret court order, as "beyond Orwellian" but a top Republican lawmaker said it had directly thwarted a terror attack in the United States in recent years.

"NSA has been doing all this stuff all along and it's been all these companies, not just one," William Binney told news program Democracy Now on Thursday.

"They're just continuing the collection of this data on all US citizens."

Binney, who worked at the NSA for almost 40 years, left the agency after the attacks of 9/11, because he objected to the expansion of its surveillance of US citizens.

British newspaper The Guardian on Wednesday released an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requesting Verizon to give the NSA the details on every phone call on its landline and wireless networks on a daily basis between April 25 and July 19.

Mr Binney estimates that the NSA collects records on three billion calls per day.

The White House says access to people's phone records is vital in fighting terrorism.

"These are routine orders," said Thomas Drake, another NSA whistleblower.

"What's new is, we're seeing an actual order and people are surprised by it.

"We've been saying this for years from the wilderness," Mr Drake told Democracy Now.

"But it's like, hey, everybody went to sleep while the government is collecting all these records."

Mr Drake started working for the NSA in 2001 and blew the whistle on what he saw as a wasteful and invasive program at the agency.

He was later prosecuted for keeping classified information. Most of the charges were dropped before trial, and he was sentenced to one year of probation and community service.

US President Barack Obama has defended using people's phone records for counter-terrorism matters without confirming that authorities are using the practice.

The program began under president George W. Bush's administration.

Advocates say the data, collected on calls inside and outside the United States by the National Security Agency (NSA) can be crunched to show patterns of communication to alert spy agencies to possible planning for terror attacks.

Senior US officials, while not confirming reports in the Guardian, defended the concept of collecting millions of phone records, and argued the program, was lawful and subject to multiple checks and balances across the government.

"The top priority of the president of the United States is the national security of the United States. We need to make sure we have the tools we need to confront the threat posed by terrorists," said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

"What we need to do, is balance that priority with the need to protect civil liberties," he said, adding that President Barack Obama welcomed public debate on the issue.

Mike Rogers, Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said the program was vitally important.

"I can tell you why this program is important, within the last few years this program was used to stop a terrorist attack in the United States, we know that," Mr Rogers said.

Officials familiar with the program said it did not "listen in" on calls or pull the names of those on the line, but simply collated phone numbers, the length of individual calls and other data.

The program "allows counterterrorism personnel to discover whether known or suspected terrorists have been in contact with other persons who may be engaged in terrorist activities, particularly people located inside the United States," said a US official.

Randy Milch, Verizon's Executive Vice President and General Counsel, said in a message to staff he was legally forbidden to comment, but that any such court order would compel the company to comply.

The revelations meant new controversy for the Obama White House as it battles claims of harsh treatment toward leakers, that it accessed phone records of the Associated Press and targeted a Fox News reporter in an intelligence probe.

An NSA phone surveillance program was first reported during the Bush administration, and formed part of sweeping anti-terror laws and a surveillance structure adopted after the September 11 attacks in 2001.

But the latest revelations are the first sign that the technique is continuing under Obama - though laws authorising such practices have been reauthorized under the current president.

A top secret order by a court set up by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) issued on April 25 and obtained by the Guardian gives the US government unlimited power to collect data from a three month period ending on July 19.

It is unclear whether telephone providers other than Verizon have faced similar orders.

Civil liberties groups voiced outrage.

"It's a program in which some untold number of innocent people have been put under the constant surveillance of government agents," said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

"It is beyond Orwellian."

Former vice president Al Gore, on his Twitter feed, agreed: "In (this) digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous?"

In digital era, privacy must be a priority. Is it just me, or is secret blanket surveillance obscenely outrageous? ow.ly/lKS13

But Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said the program was lawful and had been already briefed to Congress.

"The information goes into a database, the metadata, but cannot be accessed without what's called, and I quote, 'reasonable, articulable suspicion' that the records are relevant and related to terrorist activity," Ms Feinstein said.

The Republican vice chairman of the committee Saxby Chambliss said the report showed nothing "particularly new."

"It is simply what we call metadata that is never utilized by any government agency unless they go back to the FISA court and show that there is real cause as to why something within the metadata should be looked at."

In 2006, USA Today reported that the NSA had "been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth."

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Comments on this story

As if Posted at 7:19 AM June 07, 2013

They pride themselves on a system built on individual rights and liberty but yet they have none left for themselves. Only a stupid person believes this is accidental, only the naive thinks that all the politicians are this ignorant or stupid.

Rob of Adelaide Posted at 7:14 AM June 07, 2013

Now that the "terrorists" know that Big Brother is collecting
phone information do you think that they will use the phone for their nefarious planning?
In the US a terrorist can easily obtain a military semi automatic rifle however potential terrorists can quake in their boots knowing the authorities have their phone records.

Peter Posted at 7:02 AM June 07, 2013

This has been going on since at least 2005 and its more than just call records - do a search for Room 641A

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